Babu Verghese, an author, journalist and consultant for several Christian television channels, who was recently in Manipur, both in the valley and in the hills, and spoke widely to people of both the Meitei and Kuki communities, says that the horrifying videos and reports that surfaced in the last week of killings, burning and rapes are “just the tip of the iceberg”.
Babu Verghese says that the full truth, when its known, will be far worse than what we know today.
The world is not well beyond the stage of plausible deniability where we can claim with any degree of credibility that we “didn’t know what was happening”. If we don’t know now it’s because we choose to ignore it, just like we’ve done for pretty much every genocide in the past.
I think your last sentence is key. We don’t know what to say. It’s easier to comment on Elon Musk renaming twitter and get on our way. But I also think it’s important we try to say something, even if it’s hard to know what or where or how the hell it’s going to help at all anyway.
We should be beating on pots and pans.
We should be. Indians are, even in pouring rain, even when the mainstream media ignores it. We should also be communicating the seriousness of the issue on global platforms & to global media, because the only pots & pans Modi listens to is the international one. He ignores any dissent/protest from within India. Right now, he’s busy equating the opposition to terrorists because they’ve united against him.
Its completely understandable if the global audience forgets/ ignores problems in India, because these issues don’t affect them &/ or are just too barbaric to process. At the same time, they’re the biggest supporters of democracy, are vocal against genocide, and have the freedom to question power.
When the 2002 Gujarat pogrom was a dusty memory in India, the democratic West brought attention to it(Thank you, BBC! and questioned Modi (Thank you, WSJ!).
The Manipur genocide needs to be front & center and made non-ignorable, so that international pressure is exerted on Modi to take action. It should also result in resistance should any world leader want to welcome & honour Modi again.